Our submission to the Government's Mandate to NHS England 2018-19

Each year, we share with Government the issues we believe should be included in the refreshed objectives for the NHS for the year ahead.

In December 2015, the Department of Health published its mandate to NHS England setting out the Government’s strategic ambitions for the health service for the next five years.

As part of this, the Mandate outlines a number of key objectives for the NHS that are reviewed annually.

Part of our role is to recommend changes to health and care services that will benefit people. We are a statutory consultee on the NHS Mandate, which means the Department of Health has to ask us each year about what should be included.

Based on issues people have raised with the Healthwatch network, the following document outlines the areas we asked to be considered in the refreshed objectives for the NHS. These areas include:

Improving public involvement in changes to local services

Using people’s experiences of leaving hospital as a way of measuring how well services are working together

Demonstrating how learning from feedback is improving care

Increasing focus on the evaluation of mental health services

Shifting the focus of NHS targets to take greater account of people's experiences